Using an online estate agent to sell a property

colandsuey

Would anyone have any experience and advice they could share please regarding the use of online agents such as YOPA, House Simple, Tepilo, eMoov, Purple Bricks, etc?
If we use a conventional estate agent to help us sell our house it could cost anything up to £10k, whereas using an online one would probably cost us less than £1k, so it would make sense to give it a try.
Any advice you can give us would be much appreciated.
Many thanks!

Surrey_EA

A lot will depend on the type of property you are selling, and where it is located.

If it is a very sought after property in a popular location then one of the online only EAs would be worth a go. However, if the market is a little slow, or if the property needs to be 'sold' rather than just advertised on the internet, then a traditional EA should not be completely ignored.

eddddy

Like everything, there are good online EAs and bad ones. Similarly, there are good traditional EAs and bad ones.

The argument for agreeing to pay a traditional EA a £10k fee is that you believe they can achieve at least £10k more for your house than an online EA.

If you don't think that's the case with your house, maybe go with an online one.



FWIW - A test that I've used when an EA comes to do a market appraisal...

I ask them why I should pay them, say, £10k more than an online agent.

If they can do a good enough 'selling job' on me to convince me to pay them an extra £10k - I suspect they could do a good enough 'selling job' on a buyer to make them offer an extra £15k for my house.

(A friend who was there thinks I'm cruel to EAs for asking those kinds of questions. But I find that EAs who can give intelligent, coherent answers to questions like that are usually better at selling houses.)

golly99

I would make sure you get a traditional agent to give you a valuation too, as the ones round our way have been undervalued by PB imho.

HB58

We sold via Purple Bricks and were very happy with them. We had a long wait to the point of exchange and eventually completed at end of April but the delay was down to our vendors and nothing to do with PB.

hazyjo

Have heard good reviews for eMoov and Housenetwork (and mixed ones, but mainly okay reviews for PB). Ruled out the others when I considered it.

We're up with a traditional EA but tbh I wish I'd gone online - said I would, but then changed mind on the basis of what other people were saying. Really don't feel we've gained anything by being with them.

Jx

Pumpkim

I'm with a really new, really cheap online agent, essentially I've paid for a posting on Rightmove and Zoopla etc. I decided it was worth a try because as a buyer myself (now and twice in the past) the sellers Estate Agent didn't 'find' me, I found the house online, rang them, and they made the appointment to view, I then rang them with the offer. I didn't feel they had to work that hard to get their seller a sale.

I also sold my last house privately, with just a sign out the front with my contact number, sold in a week, but it was buoyant market then.

I think if your house is in an area where things generally sell well, and is fairly standard then there isn't much more benefit to using a traditional High St agent and online will do just as well for you.

Time will tell with my sale - I may well have to eat my words

John00100

I had a very bad experience, borderline fraud, because the service that was described in great detail to us never materialised. In the end what I got was some nice pictures (I had to rewrite the text), and ads in the usual websites. I had paid for them to do viewings, but we ended up doing everything ourselves, viewings, all negotiations etc etc, because they were doing nothing. but lying to me about making phone calls, screening people, viewing availability etc etc.
I don't think it could have been any worse, to be honest, but the house was desirable and I manage to sell it.

ka7e

My neighbour is selling via PB and is very pleased with the service, so far. 2 others in the chain of 6 are also with PB so the agent is very motivated! He had multiple viewings in the week after the ad went "live", has had 3 offers and is proceeding with one.

As my area has a very buoyant market at the moment, with lots of cash buyers around (big construction project nearby, requiring accommodation for 1000s of worker) - it seems silly to pay out big fees to High St agents. I know these agents have lists of people waiting for properties and some houses are being sold without ever going "live" on the market, but I think committed buyers are still looking out for "For Sale" signs and checking the web.

colandsuey

Which agent was that John?

boots_babe

We sold via Housenetwork and found them to be great. We started off with local agents, but having tried 3 and found them all to be awful for various reasons, we decided to try Housenetwork.

For starters, the photos they did were FAR better than any of the ones the local agents did for us, the photographer did an excellent job.

It was easy for us to amend the property details, and easy to swap around for ourselves as to which was the 'cover' photo which shows on the list view in Rightmove.

We used this to play around and see what increased our click-throughs, and also found that amending certain listing details would prompt our house to show in the results on Rightmove when people searched for recently listed properties.

The online system for logging and responding to viewing requests worked great, and they seemed to request feedback for viewers for us.

All in all we were very satisfied and next time we move, will be using them.

A bonus that it only cost us £400 in fees too, instead of 1% plus with a local EA.